Transformers Stores

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Chicago Warehouse Set Pics and Report

It seems that Transformers 3 production in Chicago has moved away from the public eye and into a warehouse location. In a set report with pictures and two brief videos from "big ander" at the NeoGAF boards, a scene is being filmed involving several Autobots and Decepticons as part of the overall sequence of event being filmed for the movie's Chicago finale.

The warehouse itself seems more like a storage location for all the vehicles, not just TFs, used for the last few weeks including the Datsuns and the Mad Max truck. As for the two videos, one shows a camera rig resetting while the second shows two SUV's driving quickly down South Indiana Avenue near East Cermak Road. As the images show, they seem to look like the Decepticon SUVs spotted in TF3's first week in Chicago. The pic to the right is the location before TF3 production dressed it up as an auto body shop.

Below is the report with sample pics but the full hi-def gallery and videos can be found here (password: anderbay). Thanks to David for the pics, links and location.

They filmed a shot over and over with Ironhide, Bumblebee, and the new Ferrari driving down a street being chased by two Decepticons. For most of the shots, Ironhide was just waiting at one end of the street while Ferrari and Bee drove toward him, and then other shots were just the Ferrari. We were told that it's a scene near the end of the movie where they're in a climactic fight. Optimus was not on set, so I guess he's fighting somewhere else.

The warehouse was more fun. We ended up not being able to take pictures, but I still grabbed a few. We saw the duplicates of Ironhide, we saw Ratchet, we saw the car version of the hair robot, we saw both Optimuses (I touched one), we saw that new firetruck, we saw the armored car decepticon, we saw the nascar autobots, and we saw one of the twins. ...We also saw the three warehouse-spanning rows of wrecked cars. That was cool. Oh, and we saw a white Maybach outside of the warehouse that looked like it was being moved. I don't really know if it's even being used in the movie, but it was still sweet. Other random stuff:

- saw the sort of 3D storyboarding of the action sequences.- Saw a bus being put together in one part, and an exploded version of it in another area.- Saw a cool big long white Benz that looked like it had been shot up. I'll be sure to look for that in the movie.- Saw an earlier version of a school bus, and then a second version being moved. The second version had braces and stuff inside; I'm guessing it'll be destroyed.

I just remembered one more thing: The warehouse had two old models of Bumblebee. I'm guessing he goes back to his old car form just for a bit for some reason. Dunno why.

38 comments:

at least our fears of ironhide dying early can be concluded to be false, of course, if they're being serious, maybe he dies in this building fight? hence why we don't see him for most of the end. (at least what's been filmed)

@Sideswipe, Possibly. There was a report a while ago which said about two decepticon assassins being in some of the first scenes of the film. Killing humans. Maybe this is the climax of that opening scene.

Ed, we don't know any more because of that. It's no reason they shouldn't place decepticon and autobot vehicles side by side in the storage facilities. It's not like they're gonna start a fight when they're off the camera, you know.

Ed, that's a funny story. I happen to have a large chrome Autobot sticker on the back of my minivan. So this one time I was parked at Walmart, a coupla kids looked at my tailgate and exclaimed to their parents, "Look mommy! A Transformer!!! Transform! Transform!"

Oh, well in my case, I went to my local mall, and in their they have these vendors that sell pre-cut or custom-cut stickers of all sortsa designs. And this one vendor had the Autobot logo in a small size in red or something.

So I said, hey I want Chrome and I want it this much larger size. And they did it for me. It cost me a bit more ($25 for 10" height) but they can do it.

Don't forget your local signage shops can do it too. Just give them a logo to insert into their computer and a specific size and choice of vinyl color you want and they'll do it for you. :)

So a question arises if reports of Bumblebee changing his alt modes multiple times is true... and the question is just this: is time travel in the movie just like it was in the officially called fake "leaked" early script of the movie? And if there is time travel.. what will it mean to the movie and how will they be able to achieve that missing the previous lead female actress? Or is it for some flashback of her death?

I think the time travel plot is a myth, on the grounds that the Datsun BB set pictures had other late model cars that didn't exist in the 80's. That is something else that made it look more fish out of water. I can't say a time skip will not be a part of the plot, we just have not seen anything to support it yet.

So far Nelson has been straight up with everything he posted about. There is no reason to distrust him. He did step up to fill the void left by Orsi, as far as the guy in the loop. We all have to thank him for that at the very least.

Every movie has duplicates of their primary vehicles. In case one gets into an accident or whatever during a stunt, chase, or engine breakdown. It's always good to have a back-up vehicle so you don't lose time between takes.

The Ironhide duplicates, the schoolbus, the black decepticon SUV's. That is alot of sticks on the rumor pile. Seems to further support my idea of Reflector, to use a hologram to look like Ironhide to ram the bus load of children? This is just one idea, with a dozen more that can come up.